The Ninja Bin
by CapnSwashbuckler
Summary: Ideas for Naruto-based stories that I either don't have the time, inclination, or writing ability to do justice.
1. Cowboys From Hell

Story concept: Fuinjutsu always seemed a bit weak. I mean it's supposed to be powerful and stuff and we only really ever see it used for a few different things. It's not the sort of thing you wipe out a village over. What if the Uzumaki clan specialty was something worth wiping out a village over? Like, I dunno, summoning and binding demons. That's worth wiping out a village over. And what if Naruto got his hands on their cool stuff from the forbidden scroll?

Young Naruto looked over the scroll he'd kicked open. 'Damn thing must be a hundred feet long,' he thought to himself as he looked it over for anything which caught his interest. 'Hmm. Kage Bunshin, no thanks. More damn clones. Edo Tensei, could be cool. Except it involves messing around with the dead...not cool. Oh hey, here's something with my name on it!' With that, he took a closer look at the entry towards the middle about Uzumaki summoning techniques. Noticing that the entry seemed to look similar to a storage scroll, he took a moment to recall the Academy lectures on the subject then poured a touch of chakra into the seal matrix. A bundle of scrolls popped out, all perfectly preserved from years in a storage matrix. Without bothering to read more about what exactly the summoning techniques did or why they were in the Forbidden Scroll to begin with, he popped one open. Barely reading over the directions, he went to work practicing the indicated handseals. Once he felt he had it down, he sliced open his hand with a kunai, let the blood pool a bit, did the indicated seals, and slammed the bloodied palm into the ground. As the chakra smoke poofed out from the point of impact, he fell on his ass, staring out of sheer shock that it actually worked properly the first time.

"Who the fuck are you?" The oddly-dressed summon stepped out of the chakra smoke and looked down on our young protagonist with just a hint of disdain. The summon in question wore an open leather vest over a black t-shirt covered in flame motifs. Tattoos, the meaning of which Naruto couldn't even begin to guess, snaked down most of his arms. He wore shorts in a mottled pattern that Naruto had never seen before, and instead of the usual shinobi sandals he had full black leather combat boots. His brown hair was long, well past his shoulders, and much wavier than was normal in the Elemental Countries. He was heavyset, with his chinbeard and the moustaches coming down around his mouth emphasizing the chunkiness of his cheeks. Not that anyone would comment on it too much after seeing the odd tool in his hands; it looked rather like two tubes welded together side-by-side and set on a wooden stock, which had been painted in a pattern which made the tool look even more out of place. The stock had white-lined blue bars in an x-pattern across the side, with white stars inside the bars, and the rest of the wooden stock was painted red. He casually slung the tool over his shoulder, brushed some lint off of his hip, and regarded Naruto again with a piercing gaze.

"Goddammit I didn't get pulled from awesome parties with hookers and blow just to be a goddamn babysitter. And why the fuck hasn't your family called on me any goddamn time in two fucking decades?" His scowl deepened into a sneer, even as the corners of his mouth tried to fight upwards in delight at the sheer scope of possibilities a young, impressionable summoner offered. Naruto, for his part, was absolutely gobsmacked. His overall mental reaction was something along the lines of, 'Wait, what?' For once, the blond was stunned into absolute silence.

"Well come on you little shitstain, I don't have all goddamn day. If you ain't got shit for me to do I'm getting back to the hookers and blow." The summons turned its back on Naruto, who cried out. "Wait! I'm the one who called you. What do you know about my family? What do you mean? And...who are you?" The summon turned back around, its (his?) face incredulous. "What do you mean, what do I know about your family? You called me so you have to be an Uzumaki. Nobody else bothers with good ol' Dimebag. Not that there are many if any with the talent outside of the Uzumaki Clan." Naruto's face fell. Naturally, he recovered and started yelling. "Of course I'm an Uzumaki! That's my name goddammit! What do you mean, nobody else bothers with Dimebag!" He cocked his head and started chuckling. "That's your name, isn't it. Okay Dimebag, start explaining. What does being an Uzumaki have to do with anything, what exactly are you, what else do you know about my family, all that shit."

"Great. This ain't much better than babysitting." Dimebag sighed softly to himself. "How bothersome. We're gonna talk about why the fuck you don't know any of this shit already later. Alright brat, listen the fuck up. I am Dimebag, the first of the Cowboys From Hell, the first summons every Uzumaki learns when they're taught to begin summoning Demons. We're bound by Oaths Ancient and all that shit to the Uzumaki Clan, which is why being an Uzumaki matters." Dimebag's scowl turned into a sharklike grin. "If you weren't an Uzumaki, I'd probably have already draped some of these trees with your intestines." His teeth began to grind of their own accord as Naruto blinked, then scooted back, pointed at him and started shouting, "D-D-DEMON!" "Yeah, this is gonna be a long fuckin' night. I need more hookers and blow," Dimebag muttered to himself.

-an hour later-

"And that, bratling, is the history of the Uzumaki Clan as I recall it. Granted, I know fuck-all about what's gone down since, shit maybe twenty-five years ago? That's the last time I was summoned, and it was a pretty desperate situation. Fuckin' Iwa nin goddamn everywhere, and we were backed up against the walls. Can't be a good sign that I've not been summoned since." Dimebag sighed and looked at the downcast blond. Demon or not, he hated to be the bearer of bad news to one of the Clan. He doubly hated having to explain the family history to an orphan; he'd gotten Naruto's story and couldn't help but wonder why the kid had to damn near commit treason to obtain his legacy. Even so, it was nothing that could be fixed or helped now; the only way was forward. Which mean cheering up Blondie. 'Kid seemed technique-crazy, maybe I can...teach him the next step. Yes. This should help.' "Kid!" Dimebag's voice rang through the clearing. "Ain't shit to be done about it right now. So we're moving to the next step of your demon summoning."

"Next step?" Naruto was surprised; he'd already summoned what was apparently a clan historian and mentor type, who had answered questions he'd had for years, whether it be with hard information about the Uzumaki Clan's history or with inferences, such as the probable identity of his mother. He couldn't think of anything else he really wanted, but learning more would at least take his mind off of everything he had to sort through at the moment and leave it for a better time. His frown turned upside-down and he lit up at the idea of new techniques. "Alright! What do I have to do?"

"Whoa there kiddo," Dimebag admonished gently. "First ya gotta understand exactly what you're doing. There's two different types of demon summoning. First, there's the kind where you reach into the beyond and pluck a Named Demon. That's like when ya summoned me. We're awesome, but we almost always have some kind of condition that has to be met. Like you have to give so many human sacrifices before a demon will allow you to call him, or you have to give so much blood each calling, or you have to defeat a strong foe on your own. You'll want to use a prepared summoning circle to call the demon first, then negotiate conditions, before you try to call a Named Demon in a battle situation. Then there's the kind of summoning where you call minor spirits in the area to aid you. Using blood to call and bind them to you and chakra to form their bodies, you call them and give them bodies of whatever's on hand. Water, mud, rock, doesn't really matter too much. It's a lot less taxing if you have the right elemental affinity, but it doesn't really matter if you have enough blood and chakra. Now remember, blood for binding, chakra for form. Just focus the chakra into the environment around you, and the spirits will handle the rest. This doesn't require seals, though the ram seal does make it easier."

"So, hold up a sec." Naruto was cautious as soon as blood was mentioned. "What if there's no spirits in the area for me to call?" It seemed a very real concern, though it really shouldn't have been, given that he lived in a hidden village, which is basically a focal point for untreated PTSD, considering the root cause, frequency and severity of 'jounin quirks'.

"It shouldn't be a problem," Dimebag said casually, waving off Naruto's concerns. "Spirits are basically will. You know, part of that triad of will, body and chakra that sustains life. Some religions or natural philosophies call it a 'soul', I think. But it's not a specific will. Rather, it's kinda like if there's enough negative vibes in a place, enough pain and sorrow, you'll be able to get something because there's enough residual anguish for something to materialize. That's what makes this a great technique for real combat; there's always a lot of pain and rage when ninja scrap for real. Although that does remind me." He looked at Naruto very seriously for a moment. "If you do need to use this in battle, keep a close eye on the spirits you call. And if you're with a team, you always tag them with your blood first. This is important! It is your blood that binds the spirits to you, and these spirits are not intelligent. They are constructs built of chakra-laced material and guided by pain and guilt and unquenchable rage and thirst for blood. If you do not tag your teammates with your blood, they will probably die. Because in the absence of orders, and believe me they will only understand very simple, very obvious orders because they are like total fucking retards in terms of intelligence, these spirits will not stop killing until you send them back, which is as easy as willing them to disperse, or until everything in the vicinity that's not you or tagged with your blood is very, very dead. It's okay if it's just the Uzumaki Clan in combat, because spirits called like this won't attack kin, but there doesn't seem to be much of a clan left, so it's kind of a concern now." Dimebag grinned wolfishly. "Unless your ninja team turns out to be full of jackasses."

Pointedly ignoring Dimebag's last words, Naruto sliced his palm, dripping blood onto the ground, then formed the ram seal, building a bit of chakra. He flared his chakra, then watched in wonder as three _things_ rose from the ground where his blood had dripped into the soil. The constructs were not even vaguely humanoid; they seemed misshapen lumps of earth and rock, with shining orbs that might have been analogous to eyes and a ravening maw filled with pointed, sharp stone where a mouth and teeth might have been. Besides those two features, they seemed mostly amorphous blobs.

"Uhh, Dimebag, is that what's supposed to happen?" Consternation was written across Naruto's face as he looked to his new mentor, who looked over his new summoner's first attempts with equal parts disgust at the sloppiness of the calling and pride that he'd managed it on the first go. "Yeah, pretty much. Don't worry, called spirits kinda look like shit until there's something for them to do. You can make 'em look all pretty and shit, but it requires pretty good chakra control and shape manipulation, as well as elemental manipulation." He looked back at his summoner, who had a dumb, confused look on his face. He sighed softly. 'I thought this kid spent years at the academy. What're they teaching kids these days?' "You need to work on your chakra control in a few areas, kid. Then your summons won't look like a nature god just shat them out. But don't worry, that's something that we can work on. Won't be easy, but we can work on it. Alright, we do have another problem though, bratling. Look, for now, if anyone else sees them, just say they're tranformed...hmm." Dimebag took a glance at the scroll. "You were supposed to learn something from this scroll, right? Well, just tell people they're...transformed shadow clones. Should work for awhile at least." He looked a little closer, realized that the shadow clones could still be interesting, and whipped out a blank scroll, quickly copying down everything that was really necessary.

Naruto asked, "Why should I lie about summoning though?" Dimebag just looked at him, deadpan, straight in the eye, setting aside his copying for a moment. "Kid...how the fuck do you think people are going to respond if you tell them you're summoning demons? I swear, you're like some kinda goddamn idiot savant. You're great at chakra techniques and summoning and shit and I swear you're a total fu...totally lacking in common sense," Dimebag gently finished. Naruto laughed and scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, the villagers all ignore me all that they can. It's not like they'd be happy about me being able to do something that awesome. And shadow clones are just another clone technique, there's no way they can be that awesome. Okay, think there's anything else we need to cover right now? Because I mean I've loved learning about my family and our techniques and stuff, but it's getting pretty late, I need to get this thing turned back in and get some sleep." As though to emphasize his fatigue, Naruto yawned deeply. Dimebag shook his head in the negative and scooped up the Uzumaki Clan summoner's scrolls as well as the plundered technique. "Nah kid, ya done good for one night. Better than most actually. Look, these scrolls are a fuckin' armful and then some. How about I hold on to 'em for ya in the beyond? That way you don't have to worry about damaging them here in this plane of existence. And it'll give me a chance to put together some kind of lesson plan for summoning practice, seeing as it looks like it falls on me and the rest of the Cowboys from Hell to teach you about this shit." Naruto thought about it for a moment. "You said you were oathbound to the Uzumaki Clan, right? So that means I can probably trust you." He nodded. "Yeah. Go ahead and hold on to them for me for now, and I'll get things squared away on this end." Dimebag, who was secretly pleased that his new summoner seemed to at least somewhat understand caution and discretion, nodded acknowledgement and poofed out.

Naturally, Umino Iruka chose that specific moment to charge into the clearing. Remembering Dimebag's precautions and warnings, Naruto quickly dispelled the minor spirits.


	2. Iruka the Peggy Sue

Makin' fun of Hollywood. This could make more sense if you're familiar with , and if you've seen a few movies that use the same trope. If you've read a Stephen King book you're probably familiar with what's going on here.

"Goddammit, fuckers are all over me like stink on shit!" The embattled academy teacher wished harder than ever that he'd put in for that vacation day to go see the Chunin Exam Finals. He'd wanted to go see his favorite student fight Neji; _at this rate_, he thought to himself, _I'll be damn lucky just to see Naruto again. Knowing that little tard he'll find the hardest point of the enemy schwerpunkt, the deadliest of death ground, and just plant himself there._ He leapt back from an enemy blade, tossing a brace of shuriken as a deterrent against advance, then, slipping a kunai out of his pouch, slid towards a nameless mook Oto nin and planted the knife in the enemy's throat. Hot arterial spray covered him as he stared down the other two Oto nin, who advanced upon him, ninjatos in hand.

Two shuriken came in from Iruka's left-rear and turned into twenty, forcing the two Oto nin to split. Iruka threw his kunai at the one who jumped left, tagging him in the thigh, and followed in pursuit. He threw a knife hand into the invader's throat, collapsing his windpipe, and clotheslined him, smashing his head down into the ground. Sparing a glance left, he saw his fellow teacher Tetsu finish his fight by driving his tanto straight through his mark's chest. He gave the man a slight nod of recognition, and the two fell back.

"Yo. Go ahead and swap out. We're cycling, take the inside spot at the first intersection." The teachers had been rotating their defenses where possible to stay fresh, between waves of assaults; while the Oto nin assaulting the academy might mostly have been at genin level, they were numerous, reasonably fresh, and they did not have to concern themselves with defending students. Like half-starved trench dogs baying for blood, their only job was to slaughter students and prevent Konoha from being able to field a proper force in future years.

Out of breath and fatigued from his half-hour shift on external defense, Iruka nodded and hustled in. He didn't rest when he got inside; instead, keeping his eyes on both the entrances the intersection faced, he refilled his weapons pouches from the boxes on the desk and stretched lightly to stay loose. His alertness was, if not exactly rewarded, then at least reinforced when, fifteen minutes into his sort-of-break, a call went across the PA box. "Invaders are forming another wave from the east! Stand to and prepare to repel invaders!" Iruka prepared to move to reinforce Tetsu, but he didn't need to bother; Tetsu's scream rent the air and his blood stained the floor just inside the doorway as a hideous, deformed monster that might at least once have been human entered.

"Iruka! Oh, the irony, seeing you again! I never thought I would, but then Lord Orochimaru's forces sprung me from jail. I even get to test an incredible new force multiplier! What do you think of this new form?"

"...Mizuki?" Iruka's jaw dropped in shock. The man he'd called a friend and coworker stood before him, ready to slay the students he once taught. He'd already been through that particular trauma once, and once was enough; he had no particular desire to relive that confrontation. Mizuki had already been the deadlier ninja to begin with; despite his stint in jail, he apparently had some crazy new power-up straight from his master's laboratory. His gape turned into a snarl as he drew a pair of kunai and prepared to fight, vowing to sell his life dearly if that's what victory demanded.

Not that it mattered. Mizuki bumrushed Iruka, tossed him into a wall, kicked him in the gut, folding him up like a cheap lawn chair, and rushed into a classroom. Iruka took a moment to regain his breath and followed, fully intent on correcting his error and killing his once-coworker. He found Mizuki standing over the eviscerated corpse of another instructor, leering at scared schoolchildren like a wolf looking over hens. "So, Iruka. Which of these brats do you think I should kill first? So many choices, so little time. Gotta get 'em all!"

What happened next was largely what one might expect. The two fought; Mizuki won. He was just too strong and too fast for Iruka to even hit. A vicious backhand tossed Iruka into a wall, shattering his ribs. Already his jaw was broken; now he could barely breathe. Gently, slowly, he reached up to his shoulders and released the fasteners of his flak jacket. He rolled into the wall to hide exactly what he was doing; he knew he wouldn't survive the fight, but he could still win, and he had one last gambit to play.

Mizuki, arrogant bastard that he was, just had to gloat, as miserable arrogant bastards are wont to do. "Iruka, still think you were on the right side of things when you sided with the damn demon? Today, I make good on that vow to kill you." With that, he grabbed the collar of Iruka's shirt and lifted him off the ground. Iruka pushed off, moving with the momentum of Mizuki's tug, driving himself upwards and pulling Mizuki into a death embrace, making sure there was no way the traitor could avoid the blast of the explosive notes he's planted across his chest and stomach. Wrapping his arms around the traitor, making a handsign behind Mizuki's back, he whispered into Mizuki's ear, "Up yours, you miserable cunt. Kai."

Like a dying star, Iruka turned into a pyroclasm for the briefest of moments, then ceased to be.

Iruka wasn't sure what exactly was happening. Not many people recover from a case of death, so reports on the hereafter were understandably sparse. That said, he expected something more natural-seeming; instead, he was in a room painted white with marble columns, comfortable-looking white leather chairs and a couch, open windows showing pure blue skies, and two men. Both had the dark complexion most often found in Kumo, though generally rare throughout the Elemental Countries. The first was a distinguished-looking older gentleman with salt-and-pepper close-cropped hair and a goatee in a white suit. He smiled gently at Iruka, the sort of smile a grandfather might give a favored grandson. The second wore considerably less, just denim jeans, an open leather vest, and what seemed to be twenty pounds of gold jewelry around his neck. His jewelry proved to be such a gaudy display that it managed to draw attention away from his mohawk for about half a second. He scowled darkly at Iruka, as though ready to dress him down, probably after stomping Iruka into the mud.

"Welcome, Umino Iruka, to the afterlife," said the first man.

"So...I'm dead? Of course I'm dead, I used enough explosive tags to blow up a damn bridge support. I hope the kids are alright," said Iruka. One could probably forgive him for his bewilderment, as he was experiencing the afterlife and didn't have any solid accounts of what that sort of thing usually entails.

"I pity da fool who don't even know that he's dead!" The second man, who didn't seem to have an indoor voice, loomed over him. "But that don't mean it's over for you. We got a job for you, and I pity da fool who refuses his place in our designs!"

Iruka blinked. "Goddammit, my work is never done, is it?"

"Come now," the older gentleman said as he draped his arm across Iruka's shoulders. "Surely you've figured out by now that the only reward for a job well done is a harder job. Now, why don't we take a look at what's going on." Pointing to a widescreen TV that Iruka would have sworn wasn't there a moment before, he took a seat on the couch and gestured for Iruka to join him. The mohawked scowler simply paced like a caged tiger behind them.

The gentler of his companions fiddled for a moment with a remote. "How does this damn thing work..." He messed with the channels, showing various scenes from across multiverses, from minisubs exploring the Marianas Trench to a man in a bulky suit walking on the moon to samurai fighting at a castle, cannon chipping away at the walls and blasting holes in the ranks of the defenders. Finally, he got the input device right and the screen showed his favorite student, Naruto, riding Gamabunta into battle with the now completely transformed and released Shukaku. "Ah. There we go. Yes, this is what else is going on. You only saw a very small part of the action. Here's a quick overview of the rest." Events on the screen started to fast-forward. Naruto woke up that insane redhead, the Sandaime fell in action against Orochimaru, and, at heavy cost and with much damage to the village, the invasion was repulsed.

"But, Iruka, there is far more going on than just that. The invasion itself would be bad enough for our plans, as it removes a lot of the possible support. Things get worse." Again, the screen started fast-forwarding, showing the removal of various demons from their containers, and Nagato's attack on the village. "Let's discuss what's going on here. The murderers in the black robes with red clouds are called Akatsuki. They're basically pawns in a world domination plot."

The rougher of the two started up again. "I pity da fool who try what they're tryin'! Normally we wouldn't care. Ain't our business. But those jive turkeys are tryin' to do it by takin' away everyone's free will. And if there's one thing we care about it's free will! I pity da fool who tries to mess with that!" Iruka noticed that the gold-bedecked man was crushing bricks in his left hand to keep his composure.

"Yes, quite. You see Iruka, there is only one thing that is truly sacred, and that is the ability of the individual man to make his own choices and find his own way. We very rarely intervene, but this situation requires it. Observe." The gentler man hit play again, and the three watched as Naruto barely beat Nagato, then went on to watch a man in an orange mask beat his ass, capture him, and rip the Nine-Tailed Fox out of his gut. "See Iruka, here is the problem. The village does its level best to keep this boy weak and useless, but someday, the entire world will need him." He turned to look Iruka right in the eye. "Your village can burn in eternal flame for all I truly care for it. But we will not see the world bathed in eternal night and the spark of divinity ripped from it simply because of one village's idiocy."

The other one then pierced Iruka with a stare. "You know what we demand of you, and you know what you need to do. The Naruto, the Child of Prophecy who fell and died alone and in despair was ignorant. Not dumb, ignorant. You fools kept him from developing any sort of intellectual curiosity early on and from developing a solid foundation of skills. Even I know that before you can pull off awesome missions that require solid planning, teamwork and skill, you gotta learn the foundation of all those aspects. Plans don't just come together."

Iruka found himself grabbed by the collar and pushed up against the wall. "Don't fail. You won't like the consequences if you fail. Jive Turkey." He was dropped like a sack of potatoes until the gentler of the two helped him up. "My less couth comrade is entirely correct," he said more diplomatically but no less threateningly. "Understand this, Iruka. There are rules. You can't reveal that you know what's coming. You can't reveal what you know that you shouldn't. This is a stealth and infiltration mission. You are to build up Uzumaki Naruto's skillset and make sure he learns the foundation of all the necessary ninja skills, especially the mental disciplines. Make sure he knows how to focus, how to study, how to learn. Make sure he maintains the intellectual curiosity to seek out and learn new disciplines. That way, even though, let's be honest, you don't have the necessary personal skills to teach him everything he needs, he will still become strong enough to do what we require of him. And remember this. Your primary duty is to us. Not to Konoha. **US.** We do not truly care if he stays loyal to the village. Your task may even be easier if you convince him to defect to Kumo. We care only that he stops Akatsuki and the man in the orange mask. We do not care about the how, so long as he does not descend to even greater vileness than the plot we require him to stop.

"So. Here is the plan. We're going to send you back through time and space to make the necessary fixes to your reality. Reveal nothing to anyone, and except for what you must do to ensure mission success, avoid radical changes. We are tasking you with making sure that the Child of Prophecy is strong enough on his own to do what must be done, not with saving your village from an invasion or saving anyone else. You have only one primary objective and no secondary objectives. I do not often say this, but it applies here: _nothing else matters_. I emphasize this because you are a rarity among your kind, a good, decent man, and I know the temptation you will feel. You will not be entirely without aid, of course. You will return to about two weeks into the semester as Naruto turns seven. That will be his second week of the academy, soon enough to make sure the spark of intellectual curiosity stays lit before it is crushed. Take a personal day when you get back. Take that day to assimilate the memories and experiences we are going to implant as we send you back. On your own, you just aren't good enough, even though you are the only one placed and inclined to make a difference. So we'll give you a bit of help in that way.

"There will be one other thing, of course. Iruka, what do you think gods essentially are?" Iruka just gawped and stammered, the revelations about what exactly was happening hitting him like Franco Harris hitting the line of scrimmage. "Iruka, we are essentially cosmic janitors. Omnipotent, omniscient cosmic janitors who despite our power are severely limited and must only act through the agency of others. And being part of the cosmic janatorial staff leaves its mark on people," he said as he snapped his fingers. Suddenly, Iruka began to _change_.

Gone was his previous appearance; he grew about five inches and thirty pounds, all of it solid muscle. His ponytail darkened into black and weaved itself into cornrows, and his skin darkened to match that of his two new companions. Internally, his muscles tightened and transitioned until they were mostly fast-twitch muscle fiber, and old organ damage repaired itself, not that he would know. His chakra coils expanded and thickened, giving him a fresh boost of energy and leaving him wondering if this is what Naruto felt all the damn time, and if so, no wonder the boy couldn't sit still to study. The two other gentlemen shared a glance, nod and a smile. The burlier one grabbed Iruka in a one-armed hug, then held out an arm for a fistbump after letting him go. "Welcome, brother, to the service of the Wise Janitors. However long that service may be."


End file.
